In this thesis we present the results of two studies of magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause using the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry magnetospheric simulation code. The first study examined the global properties of reconnection as a function of...

The ionosphere is an important source of plasma in the magnetosphere, especially during geomagnetic storms. While satellite data has confirmed this population of ions, their effect on the dynamics of the magnetosphere-ionosphere (MI) system is not...

During our fieldwork with real-world organizations---including those in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), network configuration management, and the electrical power grid---we repeatedly noticed that security policies and related security artifacts...

Access control is a core component of any information-security strategy. Researchers have spent tremendous energy over the past forty years defining abstract access-control models and proving various properties about them. However, surprisingly...

The Internet has become a virtual place where people not only operate in isolation but also interact with other Internet users. Collaborative systems are becoming more popular. Applications now being introduced could provide better remote education...

Objective. We explored preferences and perceptions about treatment decision-making roles among persons with severe mental illness and evaluated two computer-based medication values clarification tools. Methods. In this study we conducted a pilot...

Staphylococcus aureus is a formidable pathogen, and its high morbidity and mortality rates are compounded by its ability to quickly develop antibiotic resistance. The current antimicrobial pipeline is inadequate to curb this mounting public health...

We provide a theoretical model for a design involving a dc voltage biased Josephson junction (JJ) that strongly drives a high quality factor microwave cavity via the ac Josephson effect. We explore the rich classical dynamics of the resultant...

Sensing light from the environment using photoreceptors is of great adaptive significance to eukaryotes. A prominent feature of the photochemistry of these receptors is the photocycle length, the time taken to decay from the initial signaling light...

Prostate cancer (PCa) recurrences are often predicted by assessing the status of surgical margins (SM) – positive surgical margins (PSM) increase the chances of biochemical recurrence by 2-4 times which may lead to PCa recurrence. At present,...

Chlorinated ethenes are ubiquitous environmental pollutants of public concern due to their potential toxicity and carcinogenicity. Under appropriate conditions anaerobic bacteria mediate the dechlorination of perchloroethylene (a common dry...

As a result of an unstable plasma stratification the nighttime equatorial ionosphere is subject to a variety of plasma instabilities known commonly as equatorial spread-F. In its fully developed form spread-F consists of large wedges of depleted...

The synthesis of macrocyclic tetrapyrroles continues to be an area of vigorous research due to their application to a wide range of fields spanning the physical sciences. Only recently have general syntheses for the reduced systems, such as...

Calanus finmarchicus, a kind of marine zooplankton, plays an important ecological role throughout the North Atlantic. Striking seasonal variations exist in its abundance and distribution in the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank region. On the Bank in...

Successful completion of the cell division cycle is critical for cellular duplication and survival. There are many regulators and checkpoints to ensure the proper cell cycle progression. Disruption of the machinery involved in completion, error...

Self-reconfiguring robots are robots composed of many physically connected modules which can change their structural configuration to support multiple functionalities. We claim that self-reconfiguring robots are more versatile, extensible, and...

We begin with a presentation of the current state of Poljak and Turzik's conjecture that a matroid is sticky if and only if it is modular as described in [5] and [1]. We show that all graphic, cographic, and regular matroids must satisfy the...

The present studies examine the flexible application of two stimulus-response (SR) mappings to a single set of stimuli. The following questions are addressed: (1) Can dual mapping performance equal single mapping performance (2) Can rapid map...

1[2-Cyano-3,12-dioxooleana-1,9(11)-dien-28-oyl]imidazole (CDDO-lm) is a novel synthetic triterpenoid superior to its parent compound, 2-cyano-3, 12-dioxooleana-1,9(11)-dien-28-oic acid (CDDO), both in vitro and in vivo. CDDO-Im is highly active in...

In an undercooled environment any protuberance or bump on a planar solid/liquid interface that extends into the melt enhances its growth since the surrounding temperature gradient is greater than that about the planar surface. Consequently, the...

Detecting the significance of relationships between people is a complicated and difficult task. This is especially true when these relationships are intermixed with hundreds of different mundane and ordinary interactions that are simply background...

Most theoretical and computational studies of turbulence in Navier-Stokes fluids and/or guiding-center plasmas have been carried out in the presence of spatially periodic boundary conditions. In view of the frequently-reproduced result that...

One of the important challenges facing image-guided neurosurgery is the fact that the brain deforms significantly over the course of an operation during open-cranial procedures. This results in a loss of registration between the brain and the...

Previous studies have shown that the mucosal immune system is present in the female reproductive tract and under hormonal control. With the recognition that underlying stromal cells regulate epithelial cell function and hormonal responsiveness,...

Objective . To examine how continuity is related to quality measures for chronically ill elderly patients; to the specialty and caseload of the physicians they predominantly visit; and to the regional context of where their ambulatory care is...

Circadian rhythms are found ubiquitously throughout life on the planet. These biological clocks stem from common underlying molecular architecture revolving around a time-delayed feedback oscillator driving robust, approximately 24 hour rhythms. In...

Naturally occurring macrocyclic tetrapyrroles of the chlorin and bacteriochlorin classes play important roles in essential biological processes, including photosynthesis and nitrogen cycling. The chromophores also show promise in various...

I. Intermolecular C-S Bond Forming Reactions
The relatively small number of efficient C-S bond forming reactions in the literature prompted an investigation into the synthesis of allylic thioethers. The technology that we developed allowed us, in...